ESPN: No More UFC Ads

Effective immediately, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) ads are no longer accepted on the Disney & ESPN family of networks. UFC ads are a direct violation of our Affiliate agreements “Affiliate shall not insert into the ESPN network advertisements or promotions of any sports program.” Please contact your programming colleagues for complete advertising restrictions. ESPN is not accepting these ads on a national level, and the same restrictions apply for our local Affiliates. Thank you for your cooperation and immediate attention to this matter.

As Buck Woodward on pwinsiderxtra noted, it is some recognition of MMA as a sport in the traditional sense, but could there be more to it? ESPN has recognized the growth and cleaning up of MMA organizations on programs like SportsCenter and Outside the Lines. With the success of UFC on pay per view and Spike TV, is ESPN in the process of creating their own MMA program and/or affiliation with an MMA organization? Is this memo an early call to stop advertising the competition?

Comments

ESPN does recognise UFC and mix martial arts as sports (which is the actual reason they are giving for barring the advertisements). However, keep in mind that while UFC has an agreement with Spike, it does not have any kind of agreement or contract with ESPN. ESPN also is involved in boxing and has a financial stake and incentive in promoting and protecting boxing.

It would not be in the best interest of the publicly owned Disney Corporation to either promote, help promote or do anything that benefits, a competitors product over their own product or that could be (and is) harmfull to a product (boxing) in which they have invested in.

In other words, helping the enemy and hurting themselves by allowing advertisements for a product that, they simply have no financial connection to which is harmfull to something they have spent alot of money on.

Posted by Sonny on 2006-10-18 19:45:40

On Monday morning, I&aposd received a tip from a friend of mine who works in the mixed martial arts field, about how Buck Woodward at pwinsiderxtra.com had received an internal memo at ESPN that discussed the removal of all mixed&#8230